Hi there
Well, here is a photo of me at goodness-knows-what age? Nine? Ten? Younger? Was I in Wellington with my mum? There were always street photographers down Manners Street. They'd snap photos, hand you a card and you'd trot along to their studio to see the proof.
Or was I in New Plymouth?; I lived in both Wellington and New Plymouth at about that age.
And I notice that I have library books in my basket. New Plymouth was the real start of my discovering reading. And it was Enid Blyton who did it. At New Plymouth's Carnegie Library.
My previous Newtown Library in Wellington had outlawed everything Blyton, except for the one book in which children staggered under burdens growing from their shoulders, each burden size representing things the child had done wrong. Burdens could grow bigger by the day.
Anyway, thank goodness for the Carnegie Library. I hoovered up those Blyton books, dozens and dozens of them. I went to the library Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, right after school, cycling my little legs off to get home to start reading. Darn it, why was I only allowed three books per visit?
Enid Blyton was my awakening to reading -
LEARNING TO READ
I remember the look
of the unreadable page
the difficult jumble
& then the page
became transparent
& then the page
ceased to exist
at last I was riding this bicycle all by myself
(by Cilla McQueen, NZ poet. Published in NZ School Journal)
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